Tag: electric entertainment

His cover’s blown. Faces of his people have been sent to every law enforcement agency in the state. We’ve taken their money, their base of operations, and now Nate Ford will never, ever, get his revenge. They will do the only smart thing to do. They’ll scatter.

Leverage rarely plays around much with time, generally running straight through from beginning to end with only occasional detours for con explication or character asides. Tonight is a little different. We open in the present with a completely blitzed Nathan crashing a party dedicating a new museum wing to his old boss at IYS, Ian Blackpool. Offering to sell Blackpool something, we finally realize this is a con when he calls over Sophie, posing as Portia, a representative from the Vatican. We also realize Nate is not as drunk as he appears, at least not as incapacitated.

Jumping back to two weeks earlier, we get the setup – an intervention for Nate, who wants them “not to get hung up on the alcoholic” part of him being a functioning alcoholic. But since this is a Leverage-style intervention, the team just wants to help Nate get revenge. ((Good for Nate. He didn’t have to say, “no, no, no.”))

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When I was a kid, I was like eight-years old, I had a foster mom who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Used to dress me up in a suit and a bowtie, take me door to door to spread the word. Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, didn’t matter. I would kick, I’d scream, or whatever, but she would say, “Alec, you need to learn to talk to people.” See, everything I learned about people, I learned ringing doorbells in a bowtie. Parker never had that.

You think you know a show…you think they’re pulling out a jury show because they want to save a few bucks and do a bottle episode. And then they whip name guest stars at you with reckless abandon – a Brent Spiner here, an Armin Shimerman there, and what the hell, let’s top it off with a Lauren Holly for good measure – and dress a bunch of sets we’ve never seen before. What I’m saying is, this isn’t your usual jury episode.

It’s a little lighter on the action – not a fireball in sight – than some other episodes, but Jonathan Frakes manages to keep the pace brisk from behind the camera. Even courtroom scenes, which are normally the bane of any action show with all their talky-talky, don’t feel like they’re slowing down the proceedings at all.

By the way, if you didn’t catch our interview with Jonathan Frakes yesterday, be sure to go clicky-clicky right here with your mouse, touchpad, rollerball, or alternate pointy device.

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My father was an addict, my grandfather. I know how these people operate.

TNT’s done a bit of a number on the order of episodes, shuffling them around for a variety of reasons. Last week’s episode, in fact, was intended to be the third on the air according to John Rogers. But we get serendipity. Nate’s drinking from last week, which seemed a bit out of place because it was more pronounced than in previous weeks, makes a nice precursor to tonight’s full-on addiction problem.

Like any high-functioning alcoholic, as long as Nate’s well lubricated (but not too lubricated) he’s fine. Hence the booze in the soda can first thing in the morning and the ubiquitous tumbler. And like any high-functioning alcoholic, any interruption in the flow can be catastrophic.

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Oh, those nasty, nasty contractors. Having grown up around the world of contracting, this episode wins on the believable bad guy who deserves whatever Team Leverage can do to him front. Taking advantage of the victims of natural disasters? Run of the mill for a GC.

I do have to admire the simplicity of the scam Retzing & Sons pull, though.

1. Swoop in on stunned victims of natural disaster.
2. Convince victims to take out an equity loan to cover repair work.
3. Dawdle. ((This part comes naturally to most GCs. They must teach it in Contractor 101.))
4. Do shoddy work. ((Ibid.))
5. Wait for victim to default on loan payments, and since equity has been sucked out of the house thanks to shoddy, delayed word, they have little choice but to default.
6. File a contractor’s lien.
7. Profit.

See? Better than underwear gnomes. There are more steps, but none are missing.

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Forty-four minutes is not enough.

When you bring the always delightful Sara Rue on as a guest star – freaked out to fly and the target of a Very Bad Man – you need to give her some room to breathe. ((Or hyperventilate.)) Where was the awkward flirting scene with Eliot? Where was the confused three-person conversation with Parker and Hardison where she can’t see or hear Hardison? I wanted more of Sara Rue. Otherwise, this was yet another solid, entertaining episode.

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Oh hell, you give me Dan Lauria ((Interesting – to me and no one else – sidenote: Dan Lauria went to college and played football with my high school coach. Coach was the class advisor for my girlfriend’s class and got Kevin Arnold’s dad as their graduation speaker. He gave a fantastic speech that managed to incorporate Bruce Willis and Ed O’Neill. Afterwards? The girlfriend told me Lauria was a hottie. That was weird.)) and Nicole Sullivan as comedy standins for James Gandolfini and Edie Falco? Point Leverage. Add to that a script from Chris Downey loaded with subtle character humor and a slick turn behind the camera from Jonathan Frakes ((Number 1 calls the shots on *this* enterprise, bub.)) and you’ve got another solid hour from the gang.

Considering this episode was the third one shot, I was pretty pleased with the smoothness that ended up on screen.

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One of the complaints some critics have laid on Leverage is its reliance on common settings for a con/scam/mission show: bank robbery, horse track, etc. Personally, I not only find those locales comforting, but believe that specifically avoiding those settings would be unrealistic. These are thieves, after all. But tonight breaks the mold in a big way and goes somewhere I don’t believe any heist show has gone before.

My knowledge of the strife and suffering in the countries formerly composing Yugoslavia is sketchy, mostly consisting of what I’ve gleaned from features about the region’s basketball tradition. In fact, if not for tall men with names like Vlade and Drazen and Peja, I might not be able to remember the names of all the republics that split off from Yugoslavia. The fighting during the ’90s was intense and the toll is still being felt to this day. I don’t know how common the practice of using orphanages to front for gunrunners is, but there are certainly enough orphans in Belgrade to make it feasible. (more…)

Ai-ight. That’s more like it. At this point, I’m wondering whether Rogers, Downey, and Devlin have a mind probing satellite in geosynchronous orbit. A satellite tuned to my brain waves so they can put a show on the air specifically tailored to my tastes. Because this one? This one was exactly up my alley.

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Look, man! You’re lucky on this deadline I didn’t give you a baking soda volcano.

Remember in last week’s review, when I expressed my concern that Leverage might wear out its welcome if every episode involved helping out someone from the team’s past? That’s because I’d already seen “The Miracle Job” and knew that two consecutive episodes had done that very thing. It’s a small complaint, but I would really rather see strangers taking advantage of the services of Leverage Consulting & Associates.

However, if they were all going to be as much fun as this one, I wouldn’t make much of a fuss over it.

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